g. Not
that that matters, I've heaps of things to say. I'm in a communicative
vein to-night. I'll let out all my cats, even unto seventy times seven.
I'm in what I call _the_ stage, and all I desire is a listener, although
he were deaf, to be as happy as Nebuchadnezzar."

Of the two hours which followed upon this it is unnecessary to give more
than a sketch. The Admiral was extremely silly, now and then amusing,
and never really offensive. It was plain that he kept in view the
presence of his daughter, and chose subjects and a character of language
that should not offend a lady. On almost any other occasion Dick would
have enjoyed the scene. Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink, struck a
pitch above mere vanity. He became candid and explanatory; sought to
take his auditors entirely into his confidence, and tell them his inmost
conviction about himself. Between his self-knowledge, which was
considerable, and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a
strange hybrid animal, and called it by his own name. How he would plume
his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened the heart of Caesar
or St. Paul; and anon, complete his own portrait with one of those
touches of pitiless realism which the satirist so often seeks in vain.

"Now, there's Dick," he said, "he's shrewd; he saw through me the first
time we met, and told me so--told me so to my face, which I had the
virtue to keep. I bear you no malice for it, Dick; you were right; I am
a humbug."

You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature of the meeting
between her two idols.

And then, again, in a parenthesis:

"That," said Van Tromp, "was when I had to paint those dirty daubs of
mine."

And a little further on, laughingly said, perhaps, but yet with an air
of truth:

"I never had the slightest hesitation in sponging upon any human
creature."

Thereupon Dick got up.

"I think, perhaps," he said, "we had better all be thinking of going to
bed." And he smiled with a feeble and deprecatory smile.

"Not at all," cried the Admiral, "I know a trick worth two of that.
Puss here," indicating his daughter, "shall go to bed; and you and I
will keep it up till all's blue."

Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. She had sat and listened for two
mortal hours while her idol defiled himself and sneered away his
godhead. One by one, her illusions had departed. And now he wished to
order her to bed in her own house! now he called her Puss! now, even a